Budget preview provided

Tuesday

May 14, 2013 at 12:42 PMMay 14, 2013 at 12:43 PM

An early fiscal year 2014 forecast, a FY13 budget amendment and board approval of a maintenance project grant, which will take advantage of upcoming sales tax revenues pending grant approval, were the main topics of Pontiac Township High School’s Board of Education meeting Monday night.Superintendent Jon Kilgore called his forecast of the upcoming year’s budget a glimpse of where things may be so that board members may plan for projects and instructional needs as they move forward into the next fiscal year. “School funding, at this point, is an educated guess,” said Kilgore. “So we take last year’s budget, look at cash flow with two months left in the fiscal year and then we tweak those numbers with the numbers known to be changing and we can create a preview. This isn’t even as accurate as a tentative budget, just a forecast.”What Kilgore forecast on Monday is that there are still savings to be found. In order to present a balanced budget, Kilgore said he expects a relatively small deficit for the year with things still “in the black” in terms of the fund balances. “What I presented tonight was a conservative amount which doesn’t include any grants we might receive. It does include the GSA (general state aid) at 82 percent and it may be 85, so it’s an example of shooting low because we’re guessing as opposed to shooting high and being in trouble. We are hoping as we get some of those funds and know more information, that deficit gets smaller. Now that our large project is wrapped up, if it is a deficit budget next year, it is certainly going to be much less because we don’t have a large project planned.” The most complex discussion of the evening had to do with an abbreviated amendment to the FY13 budget. Kilgore started the discussion stating this was not a proposal to change any of the bottom line numbers, or anything from one fund to the next — a point he made a few times throughout the discussion. He went on to explain that when FY13 was originally budgeted, a couple things were represented in the wrong spot. For instance, the school’s new activities director position was budgeted as an administrator. Kilgore said the Illinois State Board of Education said based on what the high school is doing with the position, it should actually be budgeted as scholastic, so an adjustment needed to be made. Also, the natural transition from two part-time superintendents last year, to Kilgore being the full-time superintendent meant he now had benefits that an interim superintendent wouldn’t. This change put the PTHS budget over a 5 percent administrative cost increase. “According to public school code, you can’t exceed a 5 percent increase each year,” Kilgore told the board. “We called the ISBE and asked if we should do a full blown amendment and we got to the bottom of it and they recommended we do this abbreviated amendment that we are asking for tonight.” Since the amendment was approved, the board will go through a waiver process and have a hearing, a special meeting to be held in the summer which Kilgore said has been done by the board in the past. “We are, in essence, going to request the state legislature waive the fact that we’ve gone over the 5 percent because we are going from an interim status to a non-interim status superintendent. The ISBE said that happens all over the state when people are faced with a situation like ours. So, they said don’t worry about it, go through the process and go ahead and make your abbreviated amendment, but we had to have board action.”There are already tentative plans in place for the sales tax revenues that will begin coming in to PTHS around April of 2014. Kilgore said PTHS will receive around three months of those revenues and will put them toward a maintenance project they are seeking which requires matching funds. “When those revenues start coming in, we will use those funds to be our matching funds for the maintenance grant and if that’s approved, we’ll double our $50,000 and we can then proceed with our project.” It was approved by the board that, contingent upon them getting the grant, they will move ahead with roof repairs which Kilgore said was one of the items they listed as an area of need when talking to voters on the sales tax needs. “This would really give us an opportunity to not just do some patching, but make a nice segment in the part of our building that is the worst off on the east end.”